CHAPTER enemy Indians? She spake to the interpreter to inform XV. her what the chairman said, though we believed she un1676. derstood him, and then bade the interpreter ask her son, to

whom the English tongue was familiar, and who was reputed the son of an English colonel. Yet neither would he speak to, nor seem to understand, the chairman, but, as the interpreter told us, referred all to his mother. Being again urged, after a little musing, with an earnest, passionate countenance, as if tears were ready to gush out, and a fervent sort of expression, she made an harangue of about a quarter of an hour, often interlacing, with a high, shrill voice and vehement passion, these words: Talapotamoi dead!' Colonel Hill, being next me, shook his head. I asked him what was the matter. He told me all she said was too true, to our shame. That his father was general in that battle where, diverse years before, Talapotamoi, her husband, had led a hundred of his Indians in help to the English against our former enemy Indians, and was there slain with most of his men, for which no compensation at all had been to that day rendered to her, wherewith she now upbraided us."

"Her discourse ending, and our morose chairman not advancing one cold word toward assuaging the anger and grief her speech and demeanor manifested, nor taking any notice of all she had said, neither considering that we then were, in our great exigency, suppliants to her for a favor of the same kind as the former, for which we did not deny the having been so ingrate, he rudely pushed again the same question-What Indians will you now contribute? Of this disregard she signified her resentment by a disdainful aspect, and, turning her head half aside, sat mute, till the same question being pressed a third time, without returning her face to the board, she answered, with a low, slighting voice, in her own lan

guage,

Six!' Being further importuned, sitting a CHAPTER little while sullen without a word between, she said.

XV.

'Twelve though she then had a hundred and fifty 1676. Indian men in her town. And so she rose and walked gravely away, as not pleased with her treatment."

The ex

The vigorous prosecution of the Indian war provided for, the Assembly turned its attention to internal reforms. Fees and public offices were regulated, and provision made against abuses of official authority. The right of voting for burgesses, and the election of the parish vestries, were restored to the freemen. emption from taxes hitherto enjoyed by the families of ministers and counselors was taken away. In making the county levy, the commissioners were to be joined by delegates from the parishes. All "ordinaries, ale-houses, and tippling-houses" were suppressed, except " in Jamestown, and at each side of York River at the two great ferries." The ordinaries at these latter places might "sell and utter man's meat, horse meat, beer and cider, but no other strong drink whatsoever;" and any person,

66

except as aforesaid, presuming to sell any sort of drink or liquor by retail, under any color, pretense, delusion, or subtle evasion whatsoever, to be drunk or spent in his or their house or houses, or upon his or their plantation or plantations," was liable to a fine of one hundred pounds of tobacco, payable to the informer. Edward Hill and John Stith, "great instruments in stirring up the late differences," by reason of "the illegal and unjust burdensome taxes," by the "art, skill, and cunning" of the said Hill and Stith, and for "their private ends and gain," imposed upon the inhabitants of Charles City county, were specially disqualified to hold any office in any parish of that county. The legislation of this remarkable Assembly, known collectively as Bacon's laws,

CHAPTER Concludes with an act of general and total pardon and obXV. livion of all treasons, felonies, contempts, crimes, and 1676. misdemeanors done or counseled since the first day of March last past, to the four and twentieth day of June, except breaches of the act against trade with the Indians.

The Assembly dissolved, the general appointed by it undertook an expedition against the Pamunkeys, whom, according to the governor's partisans, he frightened from their lands, and made hostile, if they were so. While Bacon was thus employed, Berkeley was encouraged by a loyal petition from Gloucester county, got up by Philip Ludwell, one of the council, to proceed thither, and to July 29. issue a new proclamation, again denouncing Bacon as a rebel. But the projects of the governor were counterworked by the activity of Drummond and Lawrence. Bacon, in reply, put forth a declaration, in which he arraigned the governor, justified himself, and called a conAug. 3. vention of delegates from the several counties to meet at Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg. This convention, attended by many of the principal men of the colony, agreed upon an oath to be imposed on the inhabitants, and an "engagement" to be signed by them, promising to support Bacon even against troops from England till the matters in dispute could be referred to the king.

As even the loyal inhabitants of Gloucester seemed cold to his cause, Berkeley presently retired to Accomac, on the eastern shore, accompanied by Beverley, Ludwell, and a few others. This withdrawal was treated as an abdication of office, and Bacon, with four members of the council, issued writs for electing a new Assembly.

Bacon's party had been joined by Giles Bland, the collector of the customs, "a gentleman newly arrived from England to possess the estate of his deceased uncle, late of the council." Bland seized the ship of one Lori

XV.

more, increased her armament to sixteen guns, and CHAPTER sailed with a force of two hundred and fifty men to attack Berkeley, in company with Carver, "a good sea- 1676. man, and a stout, resolute fellow," who commanded a bark of four guns, and Captain Barlow, "one of Cromwell's soldiers." By the contrivance of Lorimore, supported by the courage of Ludwell, the large ship was betrayed into the governor's hands. The other vessel was also taken. Bland was put in irons, Carver and Barlow were hanged a rash act, it was thought, since Bacon had Sir Henry Chicheley and other counselors in his hands, and might, perhaps, retaliate. Most of the men, on the offer of pardon, were induced to enter the governor's service.

By liberal promises of pay and free plunder, Berkeley collected a force of near a thousand Accomacians. With two ships and some sixteen sloops, he presently entered James River, and proceeded to occupy Jamestown.

Bacon's men were already dispersed, but he soon collected a new force, and, though far inferior in numbers to the governor, laid close siege to Jamestown. The peninsula or island, for so it was called, on which that ancient town was situated, two miles in length, and about a mile in breadth, washed on the south by the James River, was encompassed on the north by a deep creek, which united with the river on the east, and ranged westward, in a semicircle, till within a few paces of the river bank. This peninsula, as described by one of the original historians of this insurrection, "is low ground, full of marshes and swamps, which make the air, especially in the summer, insalubrious, not at all replenished with springs of fresh water, and that which they have in their wells brackish, ill scented, penurious, and not grateful to the stomach, which renders the place improper to endure the commencement of a siege."

Sept. 7.

CHAPTER

XV.

While completing his intrenchment across the neck of the peninsula, Bacon resorted to a curious sort of 1676. stratagem to cover his unfinished works from attack. "He was no sooner arrived at town," so writes Mrs. Anne Cotton to her friends at Yardley, in Northamptonshire, "but by several small parties of horse, two or three in a party, for more he could not spare, he fetcheth into his little leagure all the prime men's wives whose husbands were with the governor, as Colonel Bacon's lady, Madam Bray, Madam Page, Madam Ballard, and others, which the next morning he presents to the view of their husbands and friends in town upon the top of the small work he had cast up in the night, where he caused them to tarry till he had finished his defense against his enemies' shot, it being the only place, as you do know well enough, for those in town to make a sally at."

The works being finished, and the ladies removed, the besieged made a sally, but were repulsed with loss. Finding himself in an awkward predicament, and his troops not to be depended upon, the governor made a hasty retreat by night, taking with him the town's people and their goods, "leaving all the great guns nailed up, and the houses empty, for Bacon to enter at his pleasure, which he did the next morning before day, where, contrary to his hopes, he met with nothing that might satisfy either himself or his soldiers, except a few horses, two or three cellars of wine, and some small quantity of Indian corn, with a great many tanned hides." The governor anchored some twenty miles below the town. To prevent his return, Bacon's party set it on fire, not sparing even the church, "the first that ever was in Virginia." It consisted, besides the church and state house, of some sixteen or eighteen houses, "most,